“Every interaction with another human being can potentially be understood in terms of justice.”
—Virtues: A Very Short Introduction
Our first three virtues—humility, prudence, and temperance—set the foundation for us, as individuals, to flourish. Now we begin to look beyond just ourselves to the social world around us and how we interact with one another. And no virtue feels as immediately relevant to today’s culture as justice. While most everyone would say that justice is something we should be pursuing, there is perhaps no other virtue that feels as divisive as justice—it is both what we can all agree is important and what we disagree about most. Mostly this division comes in the form of politics, where different ideologies offer differing views on how we should pursue justice and what that pursuit entails. And while justice has big, overarching implications, it can sometimes feel overwhelming to engage with and understand. So let’s start with ME, interacting with YOU. It’s about how we behave toward each other. From there, we can expand justice out to our communities, cities, countries, internationally, and even across time.
“Justice,” Cicero writes from around the 1st century BC, “teaches us to spare all men, take thought for the interests of mankind, give everyone his due, and not lay hands on the things belonging to the gods, the state, or somebody else.” Justice is needed where there are good things to be shared! Someone living on an island alone need not really be just. Everything there is, he can have for himself. But none of us live on an island—in a community where good things must be shared, justice is necessary. Theologian Ambrose of Milan says that “it is justice that renders to each one what is his and claims not another’s property; it disregards its own profit in order to preserve common equity.” In other words:
Our families, friend groups, classrooms, and SLOCA as a whole are communities built upon sharing good things—whether it be food and drink, inside jokes and memories, or ideas and opinions. All of these things, in true communities, belong not just to the person who bought the food, came up with the joke, or originated the idea—these things belong to the group to share and to build upon. Tim Keller puts it this way: “Just men and women see their money [and other resources] as belonging in some way to the entire human community around them.” From all of this, we see that justice is built upon two seemingly disparate tenets:
- We are all responsible for each other.
- We are each responsible for ourselves and our own actions.
If you don’t believe that you are responsible for others, you will never think of others as deserving anything from you. If you don’t believe you are also in some way responsible for yourself, you won’t have the motivation to be the one who goes out and does something about injustice.
When we look around (in history, in the news, and even in our own families and between our friends), we find that this world is full of injustices. Big ones—like racism, wars, genocides, human trafficking, systemic poverty, and corruption—exist alongside the smaller, daily ones—a spouse not pulling their weight, a child hitting their sibling, a friend telling lies about another friend. The weight and burden of a world filled with unfairness or even evil can easily overwhelm.
Martin Luther King Jr. famously said that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” On the flip side, according to one Chinese proverb, “one justice can overpower a hundred evils.” Thus, while we may be able to do very little to combat the big injustices, what we can do in our small sphere matters. Righting small injustices in our families, classrooms, and our SLOCA communities matters to the whole of justice everywhere! And doing one small act of justice (much less
making a habit of cultivating justice) matters in the fight against a variety of evils. This is where our offshoot virtues of justice, responsibility and citizenship, come into play.
Let’s learn from our exemplars of justice—Sherlock Holmes, Frederick Douglass, and Batman on how to put this virtue into practice:
In looking at the lives of our exemplars (and others!), we can see how they intentionally practiced justice—holding criminals to the letter of the law but also allowing them to escape legal justice in service of a higher, truer justice. Here’s a short (non-comprehensive) list of what just people pursue (for more specific ideas and practices, refer to our Practices to Cultivate Justice section in the Virtues Field Guide):
- Just people give others what they are owed.
- Just people carry others’ burdens.
- Just people share what they (could) have.
- Just people take responsibility for their wrongs.
- Just people seek small ways of fighting against big injustices.
Here is a 5-minute video giving an overview of Justice—watch with your littles to help them join the conversation!
Our Virtues Field Guide (linked in our Parent Portal) dives deep into virtue—read the section on Justice on pages 24-29! And purchase the virtues posters here to help encourage you on your journey toward the good, true, and beautiful each day!
